Luis Abinader was told in every language possible. The information was available, public, and verifiable. The documents existed. Foreign investigations had already surfaced names, dates, and figures. Yet an obstinacy that defies logic persisted when the interests at stake were large enough.

A warned soldier never dies. But in the Dominican Republic of 2026, soldiers are not just falling. They are being handed over by their own allies.

What this analysis reveals is not a story of negligence. It is a story of decisions. And decisions leave a trail.

In 2023, President Luis Abinader met with Nicolás Maduro in Cuba. The meeting was presented as diplomatic engagement. But for anyone who has followed the chronology of what occurred on Dominican soil during the eight preceding years, the unavoidable question is not what was discussed in that meeting. It is what Abinader already knew about who he was sitting across from.

In 2020, Nicolás Maduro had been indicted for drug trafficking. That was information the whole world had.

First came the nephew of Nicolás Maduro, arrested in a DEA lightning operation in the luxury villas of Casa de Campo. The world watched the face of Venezuelan narco-nepotism, but federal agents were looking for something more. In the official report, buried in a footnote that almost everyone ignored, appeared a mention that today reads like prophecy: the real target was the structure of Tareck El Aissami. They were not just looking for drugs. They were tracking the money.

Source: https://cdn.com.do/nacionales/allanan-casa-de-campo-en-rd-propiedad-de-narcosobrino-de-maduro/

Then came the businessman whose mansion in Cap Cana was raided. Then came Alex Saab, Maduro's financial architect, a Colombian of Lebanese origin identified by the U.S. Department of Justice as the regime's principal frontman. He also chose the island. There, he concealed two aircraft and operated financial structures worth close to one billion dollars.

Three different characters. Three different cases. One common stage: the Dominican Republic.

And recently a fourth name emerged. One that until now no one had connected with sufficient rigor to the Dominican map. A Venezuelan of Lebanese origin, like El Aissami. Like Saab. A businessman with established operations in the Dominican Republic, with documented ties to Tareck El Aissami and Alex Saab, with open investigations in three countries, with a business partner deported from Miami, and whose airline obtained a route concession from the Dominican government under circumstances that can no longer be explained as simple coincidence.

Camilo Ibrahim Issa.

But to understand why that name matters in the Dominican context, one must first understand the stage that preceded it.

THE BOLIVARIAN BOURGEOISIE

On March 22, 2026, in the federal court of the Southern District of Florida, the case United States v. Rivera and Nuhfer, number 1:22-cr-20552-MD, incorporated as evidence Document 423-1: the defendant David Rivera's exhibit list.

On that list appears exhibit DRX-257. Its description reads as follows:

"3.2.17 email Nuhfer to Rivera Re Bolivarian bourgeoisie, republicans and members of the opposition met in the Dominican Republic (en) w cert of accuracy and spanish original."

Date of the email: March 2, 2017, 1:36 AM.

Source: Case 1:22-cr-20552-MD, Document 423-1, FLSD Docket 03/22/2026

An email from Nuhfer to Rivera about a meeting in the Dominican Republic attended by the Bolivarian bourgeoisie, Republicans, and members of the Venezuelan "opposition."

The date of that email is not coincidental. On February 13, 2017, just seventeen days earlier, the U.S. Treasury Department had formally designated Tareck El Aissami as a drug kingpin while he was serving as Venezuela's acting vice president.

Source: https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/as0005

And that same month of February 2017, according to the Rivera federal trial, lobbyist Brian Ballard, the most powerful Republican operative in Donald Trump's inner circle, whose firm billed 88 million dollars in fees in 2025, was invited by Rivera to fly on Raúl Gorrín's private Dassault Falcon jet to the Dominican Republic. The meeting was with the Bolivarian bourgeoisie and Venezuelan "opposition" leaders.

Source: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/trump-ally-testifies-in-trial-over-secret-venezuela-lobbying-effort

Gorrín was not a Venezuelan dissident seeking democratic support. According to federal prosecutors, he was a regime operative who had diverted PDVSA funds to the Dominican Republic and other countries, while simultaneously building bridges with the Republican establishment to soften sanctions against Maduro.

The intelligence community reached the conclusion that the real objective of that operation was to involve Ballard and Rubio, without their knowledge, in a scheme that could later be used as political blackmail material. The intelligence community does not rule out that this was an operation of Hezbollah and Iranian intelligence.

The goal was not to buy influence. It was to manufacture compromise and weaponize it as leverage. And the territory chosen to execute that operation was the Dominican Republic.

When Ballard later confronted Rivera, Rivera reminded him of his presence at that Dominican meeting and told him: "you are also part of this." That sentence encapsulates the regime's complete strategy: involve, document, retain.

Source: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/trump-ally-testifies-in-trial-over-secret-venezuela-lobbying-effort

And the Dominican Republic was the territory where that strategy was rehearsed.

The Bolivarian bourgeoisie mentioned in the March 2, 2017 email, exhibit DRX-257 of the federal case, are precisely the same circle of Venezuelan-Lebanese businessmen that orbits around Camilo Ibrahim Issa. The term is not generic. In the Venezuelan context it describes a specific, identifiable group of businessmen enriched under Chavismo whose fortunes are documented in corporate registries, OFAC sanctions, and judicial investigations across multiple countries.

Ibrahim Issa is one of them.

Issa is not a name that appears in headlines with frequency. That opacity is precisely what makes him relevant. According to the Spanish outlet El Boletín, in a publication dated May 13, 2025:

"The impact of Camilo Ibrahim Issa is not limited to Venezuela. His vision led him to participate in shopping center initiatives in Panama, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic."

Source: https://www.elboletin.com/en-archivos-conocemos-detalles-de-la-trayectoria-del-empresario-clave-camilo-ibrahim-issa/

His principal business vehicle is Phoenix World Trade, a Panamanian company that controls the Inditex franchises, the group that owns Zara, in Venezuela and in the Dominican Republic. Three physical stores operated under that umbrella on Dominican soil: two in Santo Domingo and one in Punta Cana.

This connects him to the Dominican Republic in time and space with active properties and businesses, where controlling a brand like Zara provides access to people of power.

But Phoenix World Trade is not just a fashion company. According to the dossier of Spain's Audiencia Nacional and various journalistic investigations, it is the nucleus of a network of more than thirteen offshore entities distributed across Panama, Spain, and Aruba, several of them documented in the Paradise Papers leaked by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

Source: https://www.vozpopuli.com/espana/empresario-cercano-delcy-magnate-plus-ultra-lanzan-campana-blanquear-imagen-espana.html

The connection between Ibrahim Issa and Alex Saab is documented. According to Venezuelan investigative outlet Armando.info and the Spanish newspaper Vozpópuli, Ibrahim Issa and his partner Rodolfo Reyes were summoned in 2018 by the Venezuelan National Assembly for alleged corruption within the CLAP food assistance program, the very program the U.S. Department of Justice investigates as Saab's primary money-laundering mechanism.

Source: https://www.vozpopuli.com/economia/eeuu-dueno-plus-ultra.html

Saab, in turn, has been linked by U.S. authorities to Hezbollah financing networks. And El Aissami, who according to Colombian Senator Piedad Córdoba was the man who introduced Alex Saab to Hugo Chávez, is the documented architect of that connection.

Source: https://www.elnacional.com/2022/11/ellos-se-dicen-primos-piedad-cordoba-insinua-que-tareck-el-aissami-fue-quien-presento-a-alex-saab-y-hugo-chavez/

The Lebanese connection: El Aissami builds the bridge with Hezbollah. El Aissami introduces Saab to Chávez. Saab and the Plus Ultra shareholders are summoned together by the Venezuelan Assembly in 2018. Ibrahim Issa is one of those shareholders. Ibrahim Issa has established businesses in the Dominican Republic. And the Dominican Republic is where El Aissami kept his assets, where the Bolivarian bourgeoisie met according to the exhibit in the Rivera case, and where regime aircraft operated with apparent normalcy.

That is not a chain of assumptions. It is a chain of documents.

To understand how Ibrahim Issa enters the Plus Ultra story, one must travel to Panama and to a bank few people know: Panacorp.

According to an investigation by the Spanish newspaper Vozpópuli, a relative of Ibrahim Issa, Mohamed Ibrahim, appeared as director and treasurer of Panacorp Casa de Valores during the period when the operations now investigated by Spanish justice were taking shape. And it was Panacorp that, in late 2017, granted Plus Ultra a participating loan of 6.3 million euros. Without that money, the airline would have filed for dissolution.

Source: https://www.vozpopuli.com/economia/eeuu-dueno-plus-ultra.html

In 2017, Ibrahim Issa also disbursed more than 3.7 million euros to acquire 619,000 shares of Plus Ultra, according to corporate registry records accessed by Vozpópuli. He was not a peripheral investor. He was the financial backbone of the airline.

Source: https://www.vozpopuli.com/economia/eeuu-dueno-plus-ultra.html

The Panamanian bank also held Venezuelan bonds worth more than 9.3 million euros, including PDVSA debt, and operated as custodian of assets linked to Commonwealth Bank, an entity based in Dominica directly associated with Phoenix World Trade. The relationship is clear: Ibrahim Issa, Phoenix World Trade, Panacorp, Commonwealth Bank, Plus Ultra. All connected. All with a presence or ties in the Dominican Republic.

The same year Ibrahim Issa entered Plus Ultra's capital, 2017, was the same year the exhibit DRX-257 email documented a Bolivarian bourgeoisie meeting in the Dominican Republic. And the same year El Aissami was sanctioned by the U.S. and his private flights began transiting Dominican soil, as documented in the federal indictment from the Southern District of New York.

FITUR

On March 9, 2021, the government of Pedro Sánchez approved a bailout of 53 million euros for Plus Ultra through the SEPI state rescue fund. The decision was immediately challenged. The airline controlled less than 0.1 percent of the Spanish air market, had accumulated 10.8 million euros in losses between 2014 and 2019 without a single profitable year, and operated with between two and four aircraft.

An airline useful for transporting certain things, but one watched by different intelligence agencies — making it nearly impossible to inject financing without triggering alerts.

The justification for declaring Plus Ultra a "strategic" company was its niche "connectivity" to Latin America, including routes to the Dominican Republic that did not yet exist.

Two months after the bailout, between May 19 and 23, 2021, the International Tourism Fair, FITUR, was held in Madrid. An official delegation from the Dominican Republic's Civil Aviation Authority, the JAC, traveled to Madrid and met with Plus Ultra representatives. The airline, freshly rescued with Spanish public money, expressed interest in resuming its operations in the Dominican Republic.

JAC president José Ernesto Marte Piantini confirmed this publicly on November 11, 2021, as reported by Diario Libre:

"Marte Piantini highlighted that within the framework of the International Tourism Fair, FITUR, held in Madrid, Spain, in May of this year, and as part of meetings held by the JAC delegation with representatives of the airline Plus Ultra Líneas Aéreas S.A., they expressed interest in resuming their operations in the country, for which reason in that same session the request for the issuance of an operating permit to operate the route Madrid/Santo Domingo/Madrid was received and sent to public hearings."

Source: https://www.diariolibre.com/economia/jac-aprueba-30-nuevas-rutas-a-operador-aereo-nacional-FK29895909

That communiqué now returns a 404 error on the JAC's official website. It was deleted.

But there is a detail that makes this chronology even more revealing. In Plus Ultra's own official communiqué published in March 2021, two months before that FITUR meeting, the airline already publicly declared:

"Next summer 2022 we will resume, thanks to this financing, our plan to open new routes, incorporating four new destinations, including Colombia and the Dominican Republic."

Source: https://www.plusultra.com (official communiqué, March 2021)

The question is direct: how was Plus Ultra announcing in March 2021 that it would open a route to the Dominican Republic if the meeting with the JAC, according to the Dominican government itself, took place in May 2021?

The only logical answer is this: the agreement existed before the official meeting took place. The Dominican route concession was used as a guarantee to convince investors and the SEPI itself that Plus Ultra had real expansion plans justifying 53 million euros of Spanish public money.

An additional detail reinforces this reading. There is a press release dated April 28, 2021, published before FITUR, where Marte Piantini was already discussing outreach to airlines to expand routes — a release that was also deleted from the Dominican digital archive and today returns an error.

Source: https://x.com/martepiantini/status/1387528962428084224?s=10

The route concession did not only serve to obtain the initial bailout. Its most critical role was to protect the second tranche when the judicial process threatened it.

On July 22, 2021, Spanish judge Esperanza Collazos blocked the disbursement of the remaining 34 million euros and demanded that Plus Ultra prove it genuinely needed that money. According to European Press agency as reported by La Nación:

"The judge overseeing Juzgado de Instrucción Number 15 in Madrid, Esperanza Collazos, ordered the suspension of the delivery to Plus Ultra of the 34 million euros that were due to be disbursed on July 28, 2021."

Source: https://www.lanacion.com.ar/agencias/la-juez-suspende-el-pago-de-34-millones-de-euros-del-segundo-tramo-del-rescate-a-plus-ultra-nid22072021/

The block was lifted weeks later while the presiding judge was on vacation, by a substitute judge. And in November 2021, with the investigation still active, the JAC formally opened public hearings. In February 2022, it approved the permit through Resolution 46-2022.

Plus Ultra now held an official Dominican Republic concession to show any judge or investor asking about the airline's viability. That permit was worth 34 million euros. Not as an airline route. As a financial backing instrument.

Source: https://www.ladevi.info/negocios/fitur-plus-ultra-aterrizara-republica-dominicana-n37041

By November 2021, when the JAC opened public hearings for the Plus Ultra permit, the information about its shareholders was public and devastating.

Rodolfo Reyes, majority shareholder of Plus Ultra with 45.33 percent of the capital, had been intercepted, questioned by a multi-agency U.S. federal task force, and deported from Miami International Airport. The flight he was traveling on, American Airlines flight 987 from Panama City, made a layover in the Dominican Republic.

According to La Patilla:

"U.S. immigration authorities denied him entry due to problems with his visa and they were reportedly deported hours later to Panama. They had arrived at the Florida capital on American Airlines flight 987, which departed from the Panamanian capital and made a layover in the Dominican Republic."

Source: https://lapatilla.com/2021/06/11/eeuu-impide-la-entrada-en-el-pais-a-uno-de-los-duenos-de-plus-ultra/

If we apply an intelligence and parallel-analysis framework, we notice that the U.S. Department of Transportation requires any foreign airline seeking approval to demonstrate financial independence and that its shareholders meet fitness criteria. Plus Ultra would not have passed that filter. The majority shareholder had been deported from Miami. His partners were under investigation in three countries with documented ties to Alex Saab. The airline had already abandoned that same Dominican route in 2017 due to lack of commercial viability.

Source: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2014-05-20/pdf/2014-11560.pdf

The Dominican JAC approved in February 2022 what Washington would have rejected at the first screening stage. And the communiqués documenting that process were deleted from the official website.

THE PASSPORT WITH NO STAMPS

There is one datum in this story that transcends the Plus Ultra case and reveals the systemic function the Dominican Republic served within the network.

Before Spain's Senate investigative commission, former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero acknowledged under oath:

"There was a first stage in which I traveled directly to Caracas. Then it got complicated because there was some tension on the flights. So there came a moment, I do not remember exactly when, in which I would fly to the Dominican Republic and, in the Dominican Republic, a government plane would pick me up and complete that journey."

Source: https://www.libertaddigital.com/espana/2026-03-04/plus-ultra-hacienda-obligada-a-investigar-a-zapatero-por-delito-fiscal-tras-confesar-viajes-de-avion-pagados-por-pdvsa-7368091/

That is not journalistic speculation. That is Zapatero himself before the Spanish Senate.

The UDEF report number 1908/26, included in the Audiencia Nacional dossier, confirms it from another source: intercepted messages from the phone of Rodolfo Reyes, Plus Ultra's majority shareholder, provided by the U.S. Homeland Security Investigations agency. In a conversation dated December 5, 2020, Julio Martínez Sola wrote: "The namesake and Zapatero heading to CCS. Via SDQ. SDQ to CCS on private plane."

SDQ is the IATA code for Santo Domingo's Las Américas International Airport. CCS is the IATA code for Caracas's Simón Bolívar International Airport.

Source: https://theobjective.com/espana/tribunales/2026-05-26/zapatero-viaje-venezuela-testaferro-rescate-plus-ultra/

Zapatero flew from Madrid to Santo Domingo on regular commercial flights. In Santo Domingo he boarded Venezuelan regime aircraft that transported him to Caracas without leaving a Venezuelan entry stamp in his passport. The Dominican Republic was the hinge that erased the record of that displacement.

And the route Plus Ultra opened in July 2022, Madrid to Santo Domingo, was exactly the route Zapatero used to reach the stopover that no one was supposed to see. The airline of the Venezuelan-Lebanese boliburgués Ibrahim Issa, operating the route of the Spanish former president who traveled to Caracas without leaving a trace.

THE FALCON

In September 2024, the United States seized in the Dominican Republic a Dassault Falcon 900 valued at approximately 13 million dollars, the property of Maduro's Venezuelan regime. The aircraft had been sitting on Dominican soil for months.

According to CNN:

"The United States confiscated on Monday in the Dominican Republic the official aircraft of Venezuela's dictator Nicolás Maduro, based on U.S. sanctions against Venezuela. We are sending a clear message here that no one is above the law, no one is beyond the reach of U.S. sanctions."

Source: https://www.diariodecuyo.com.ar/mundo/eeuu-incauto-el-avion-del-dictador-venezolano-nicolas-maduro-que-estaba-en-republica-dominicana-1656422.html

This is the same type of aircraft Zapatero described before the Spanish Senate: a Falcon, from the Venezuelan government, operating from the Dominican Republic. The same model used in the exchange that freed Alex Saab when the Biden administration negotiated his return to Venezuela.

Source: https://www.libertaddigital.com/espana/2026-03-04/plus-ultra-hacienda-obligada-a-investigar-a-zapatero-por-delito-fiscal-tras-confesar-viajes-de-avion-pagados-por-pdvsa-7368091/

In February 2025, a second regime aircraft was seized on Dominican soil. Same routes. Same territory. Two seizures that are not discoveries: they are confirmations of what the federal indictment from the Southern District of New York had already documented for the period 2017 to 2019, when El Aissami and López Bello used private flights transiting the Dominican Republic, paid for with cash smuggled from Caracas — specifically to avoid having a Venezuela entry stamp on the passports of visitors to the regime.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/latam/domestico/VMLHMWAC7ZO2PIU5YI22MDBQAU-2025-02-06/

A network does not operate for years in a territory without local protection. Without facilitators. Without people looking the other way at precisely the right moment. Dominican authorities knew they were coming back — as long as the passport showed no stamp from their trip to Caracas.

Did the Dominican Republic not know about Maduro's history and his ties to Hezbollah?

Let us look at the record:

September 2008: The U.S. sanctions Venezuelan officials for narco-FARC ties. International news.

Source: https://www.vozdeamerica.com/a/article-2008-09-12-voa13/21763.html

November 2015: 80 kg of cocaine and heroin found at the home of Cilia Flores's nephew in the Dominican Republic. New York prosecutors were targeting El Aissami. DEA operation on Dominican soil.

Source: https://acento.com.do/actualidad/encuentran-cocaina-en-casa-sobrino-de-esposa-de-maduro-en-republica-dominicana-8299793.html

January 2015: Luis Abinader, then a presidential candidate, publicly advocates paying the Petrocaribe debt. The person controlling that business was Tareck El Aissami.

Source: https://x.com/listindiario/status/561529844358737920?s=42

February 2017: The U.S. formally sanctions El Aissami as Venezuela's acting vice president.

Source: https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/as0005

March 2, 2017: Email from Nuhfer to Rivera about a meeting in the Dominican Republic of Bolivarian bourgeoisie, Republicans, and Venezuelan opposition members. Exhibit DRX-257, federal case 1:22-cr-20552-MD.

Source: Case 1:22-cr-20552-MD, Document 423-1, FLSD Docket 03/22/2026

February 2017: Rivera, Ballard, and Gorrín fly on a private jet to the Dominican Republic. Influence operation designed to compromise Rubio and Ballard with Venezuelan funds.

Source: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/trump-ally-testifies-in-trial-over-secret-venezuela-lobbying-effect

2017: Ibrahim Issa disburses 3.7 million euros to enter Plus Ultra's capital. His family bank Panacorp had already lent 6.3 million euros to the airline.

Source: https://www.vozpopuli.com/economia/eeuu-dueno-plus-ultra.html

2017 to 2019: El Aissami and López Bello flights transit the Dominican Republic, paid with cash smuggled from Caracas. Documented in the SDNY federal indictment.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/opa/page/file/1261556/dl?inline

2018: Ibrahim Issa and Reyes are summoned by the Venezuelan National Assembly alongside Alex Saab for alleged CLAP corruption.

May 2019: Dominican prosecutors and the DEA raid Samark López's villas in Cap Cana. El Aissami was the real target.

Source: https://apnews.com/general-news-b135f563b00444c1ab09d6a683479fd0

July 2019: ICE names El Aissami and López Bello among the ten most wanted fugitives in the United States.

Source: https://www.ice.gov/es/los-mas-buscados-por-ice/gorrin-belisario-raul-antonio-de-la-santisima-t

March 2020: The DOJ formally charges Maduro with narco-terrorism alongside 14 officials.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/nicol-s-maduro-moros-and-14-current-and-former-venezuelan-officials-charged-narco-terrorism

March 9, 2021: Spain rescues Plus Ultra with 53 million euros.

May 2021: The Dominican JAC delegation meets with Plus Ultra at FITUR Madrid, two months after the bailout. The communiqué documenting that origin is later deleted from the JAC's official website.

December 2020 to 2021: The UDEF report documents Zapatero traveling via Santo Domingo, SDQ, to Caracas on Venezuelan regime aircraft.

Source: https://theobjective.com/espana/tribunales/2026-05-26/zapatero-viaje-venezuela-testaferro-rescate-plus-ultra/

July 2021: The Spanish judge blocks the second 34-million-euro tranche of the bailout. Plus Ultra urgently needs to demonstrate viability.

Source: https://www.lanacion.com.ar/agencias/la-juez-suspende-el-pago-de-34-millones-de-euros-del-segundo-tramo-del-rescate-a-plus-ultra-nid22072021/

August 2021: Abinader, now president, negotiates with the PDVSA orbit to purchase 49 percent of REFIDOMSA for 88 million dollars. The Venezuelan counterpart was again Tareck El Aissami, now serving as oil minister.

Source: https://www.diariolibre.com/estilos/sociales/gobierno-dominicano-adquiere-el-control-del-100-de-las-acciones-de-refidomsa-AB28290440

November 2021: The JAC opens public hearings for the Plus Ultra permit, months after its majority shareholder was deported from Miami.

February 2022: The JAC approves the permit through Resolution 46-2022.

July 2022: Plus Ultra inaugurates the Madrid to Santo Domingo route.

February 2023: Plus Ultra quietly abandons the route after only eight months of operation.

2023: Abinader meets Maduro in Cuba.

September 2024: The U.S. seizes the first Maduro aircraft in the Dominican Republic.

Source: https://www.diariodecuyo.com.ar/mundo/eeuu-incauto-el-avion-del-dictador-venezolano-nicolas-maduro-que-estaba-en-republica-dominicana-1656422.html

August 2025: The U.S. seizes Villa La Caracola in Cap Cana, confirming what a 2019 social media post had already identified.

Source: https://www.diariolibre.com/actualidad/nacional/2025/08/13/asi-es-la-lujosa-mansion-le-habria-sido-incautada-a-nicolas-maduro/3212746

October 2025: A tanker sanctioned for Hezbollah ties departs Puerto Viejo, Dominican Republic, bound for Venezuela.

Source: https://eltestigo.com/tanquero-vinculado-a-hezbollah-sancionado-por-ee-uu-arriba-a-venezuela-tras-zarpar-desde-rd

February 2025: A second Maduro aircraft seized in the Dominican Republic. Same routes documented in the 2019 indictment.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/latam/domestico/VMLHMWAC7ZO2PIU5YI22MDBQAU-2025-02-06/

April 2026: The Rivera trial reveals the Dominican Republic was the stage for an influence operation against Trump's inner circle in 2017, with Bolivarian bourgeoisie present.

Source: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/trump-ally-testifies-in-trial-over-secret-venezuela-lobbying-effort

AND THERE IS MORE

The Southern District of New York federal indictment against El Aissami, Samark López, and Joselit Ramírez establishes that from February 2017 through March 2019, in the Southern District of New York, Venezuela, Turkey, Russia, the Dominican Republic, and elsewhere, the defendants conspired to defraud the U.S. Treasury and the OFAC.

The Dominican Republic does not appear as a footnote in that document. It is named in the statutory allegations at the same level as Venezuela, Russia, and Turkey.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/opa/page/file/1261556/dl?inline

That indictment was filed in 2019 and was publicly accessible. For any Dominican official willing to read it, the island appeared explicitly as a node of an active criminal conspiracy of global scope.

And yet, in 2021, the Dominican government approved a route concession for an airline whose shareholders belonged to the same circle documented in that indictment. In 2021, that same government negotiated directly with the PDVSA orbit to acquire REFIDOMSA. In 2023, its president personally met with Maduro in Cuba.

A post published by a citizen in May 2019 on X identifying Villa La Caracola as a Maduro regime property was officially confirmed six years later by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. If that information was visible from a social media account in 2019, the question is not whether the Dominican government could have known.

Source: https://x.com/dortiz52/status/1124448800972648448?s=42

The question is what decision it made knowing what it knew.

Since 2015, every significant operation linked to the Venezuelan regime in the Caribbean has a Dominican address. Every sanctioned aircraft. Every seized mansion. Every shell company. Every Hezbollah-linked tanker. Every Bolivarian bourgeoisie meeting documented in a federal courthouse. All of them have a contact point with the Dominican Republic that U.S. government documents have been confirming one by one over the course of a decade.

Camilo Ibrahim Issa, Venezuelan of Lebanese origin, Chavista boliburgués, Plus Ultra shareholder, Dominican Republic franchise operator, associate of a man summoned alongside Alex Saab in Venezuela, is the name that connects the Spanish Plus Ultra investigation to the Dominican map that the federal indictment, the Rivera case, and the 2024 and 2025 seizures have been drawing with increasing precision.

It is not that the island was a passive accomplice. It is that it was chosen precisely because it functioned as a node without asking uncomfortable questions.

That is a question this analysis leaves open, because answering it is not the responsibility of journalism. It belongs to the Dominican people.

Why do Maduro and Chávez trust Lebanese figures so much? That is the thread this investigation does not yet fully pull. But the pattern it leaves behind points in a direction that can no longer be ignored.

METHODOLOGICAL NOTE

This investigation is based exclusively on public sources, accessible judicial documents, corporate records, official declarations before parliamentary commissions, and journalistic articles from reference media outlets. No data presented as verified derives from anonymous sources without documentary support. Where uncertainty exists, it is explicitly noted. Where sources conflict, it is indicated. The presumption of innocence applies to all persons mentioned until a final judicial sentence determines otherwise.